Together and By Ourselves

Alex Dimitrov

Together and by Ourselves, Alex Dimitrov’s second book of poems, takes on broad existential questions and the reality of our current moment: being seemingly connected to one another, yet emotionally alone. Through a collage aesthetic and a multiplicity of voices, these poems take us from coast to coast, New York to L.A., and toward uneasy questions about intimacy, love, death, and the human spirit. Dimitrov critiques America’s long-lasting obsessions with money, celebrity, and escapism—whether in our personal, professional, or family lives. What defines a life? Is love ever enough? Who are we when together and who are we by ourselves? These questions echo throughout the poems, which resist easy answers. The voice is both heartfelt and skeptical, bruised yet playful, and always deeply introspective.

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ISBN: 9781556595103

Format: Paperback

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A Living

I watched you row us back, into the distance of human familiars.
And the bees gathered as if to become more than one sound.
In the city, when late, I want even the well-behaved strangers
at boring parties. They exhaust me.
All small talk and posture; (come here and exhaust me)
and what is the mind?
Even you. The leaves. In their temporary dying,
give a rich background to people taking each other to bed.
Why would I give up the physical world?
Today, it is all I believe.
And whatever addictions it sells me
(the first open mouth on my own teenage mouth)—
I am shy but impressed.
I am living and badly. The oars hit the dock,
the plates cling to their places,
look at all that has come here and gladly
to rot. A handful of flowers and vinegar.
Leather and silk. Cancer and love.
I don’t even need to be promised fidelity now.
Someone’s lowered his hands to a place without speech.
The pelting on the window is rain.
My tongue, I have found, is warmer
than any sentence I’ve wanted to feel.
And what I have wanted, I should try and forget.
So I stay;
don’t you think so—where else would we go,
what is open this late?
I have waited all day just to see you.
In the darkest part of the water.
I see you in the darkest part of the water and swim.

About the Author

Alex Dimitrov is the author of three books of poems, including the upcoming Love and Other Poems, as well as the chapbook American Boys. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He was the former senior content editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited Poem-A-Day and American Poets. He has taught creative writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Barnard College, among other institutions. With Dorothea …

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Reviews

“Dimitrov is a vital new energy in American poetry.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Truth-telling, raw, fierce with feeling.” —Brenda Shaughnessy

“Dimitrov can sound at once hip and naive, devoted to the sincerities that other sorts of poets reject or obscure.” —Publishers Weekly